The advantages of recording scene parameters on film contemporaneously with each exposure are well understood. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,580 teaches the recording on film of an indication that a group of frames thereon are related to the same scene. Such an indicator is readily used by the photofinisher to justify applying the same print exposure conditions to all of the film frames in the group, thereby keeping the scenes uniform in the prints returned back to the customer.
One disadvantage of the foregoing technique is that the series scene indication thus recorded on the film may not necessarily be reliable enough for a photofinisher to rely upon. For example, if it is the camera user himself who is to manually activate the means for recording the series scene indication on the film, the reliability of such an indication is limited by the skill of the camera user. Another disadvantage is that this type of technique is typically taught in connection with an optical recording technique using bar codes and the like. Thus, while the film itself serves as a memory in which to store the series scene indication, the film is merely a read-only memory following its development, when the series scene indication becomes readable. Accordingly, if any related information is to be stored by the photofinisher, he cannot use the film to do so.
Therefore, a problem which needs to be solved is how to record a series scene indication on film in the camera in a reliable manner such that a photofinisher can rely on such an indication in nearly all instances for selecting the scenes bearing such a series scene indication for printing with uniform print exposure conditions. Another problem is how to record series scene indications using the film as a memory in such a manner that the film remains useful as a memory in which further information related to the series scene indication may be stored as well as retrieved on the film by the photofinisher following development of the film. A third problem to be solved is how to record on the film a series scene indication for each frame wherever appropriate in such a manner that the indication is unambiguously associated with the corresponding film frame and readily acccessible to a photofinisher.